Everybody Has a Name
by Solstice Zero
Summary: In which Ianto, having recently learned of Jack's immortality and his past as a time traveler, has questions. Maybe he shouldn't ask them in Tescos, but there you go. Takes place fairly soon after KKBB.


He asked in the canned foods aisle, because this – he wasn't going to call it a relationship, that still felt ridiculous – but whatever it was, it was new and terrifying and this felt like some kind of neutral territory.

"Do you think of us as primitive?"

Jack liked to push the trolley with his forearms folded over the handle, shoulders hunched and head down like an animal stalking its prey. Jack Harkness, king of the jungle, hunting wild tins of stewed tomatoes. The buttons on his coat clinked against the crossed metal of the trolley when he stopped. "Primitive?"

Ianto shrugged, looking at the nutrition facts on the label of a tin of beans. "We're about where Jesus was, in comparison to your time."

Jack smirked, tapping his fingers on the trolley with tiny metallic _ting_s. "Nice guy, Jesus. Little stingy with the wine, though."

"_For you and for many_," Ianto muttered. He set the tin down and picked up another one. "I'll never know when you're lying, now. I thought you were always lying."

Ianto put the tin in the trolley and moved down to the next section of shelving. He was perversely relieved. He had asked the question, Jack had dodged the question in his thoroughly charming and maddening way, and there was no way to bring it up in the future without looking desperate. That was the end of it.

"No, I don't think of you as primitive. It doesn't work that way for a time traveler."

Damnit.

Jack had selected a trolley with a squeaky wheel. It announced his moving closer without Ianto having to turn and see his expression, whatever it might be. Ianto took down another tin without looking at it. _How does it work for a time traveler?_ His mouth was so useful for everything except talking like this. Maybe if Ianto blew him in the middle of the supermarket, Jack would stop offering explanations. Neutral territory.

"I've been places thousands of years in the past and tens of thousands of years in the future. No one is primitive."

Ianto considered his can of – pork brains in milk gravy? Oh, that didn't look like obvious avoidance at all.

"Hey, stop counting your calories and listen. This is important."

Ianto set the can back on the shelf and looked at Jack. He had his _'this is interesting, I am going to teach it to you'_ face on, a face that largely left Ianto unimpressed, because some of the things that Jack found interesting were in fact mind-numbingly dull. But he listened anyway. He was incredibly aware of his hands. He stuffed them in his pockets.

Jack nodded, having gained his attention. "Okay. I was a time traveler for a good part of my life." (Ianto mentally added that to the list of Things No One Had Ever Said To Him Before. Jack dominated that list.) "I learned a lot about people. And the most important thing that you learn – the thing that keeps you alive and human and out of trouble – is that the time you're visiting isn't what's different. _You're_ different." Jack straightened up, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. "Say, right now, you're suddenly sent back to zero A.D. Standing here and thinking about it, you imagine that you would be smarter than the people you'd appear among, right?"

Ianto frowned. "I know how electricity works and I can find my way around an internal combustion engine. There's a fair chance I'd be smarter."

Jack shook his head, grinning. "You're wrong. That kind of knowledge meant nothing back then. You'd be the village idiot. You wouldn't even know the language."

Ianto opened his mouth to argue, but stopped. He thought about it. "I'd be the one who was behind the times."

"You mean you don't even know how to build a house? How to find clean water? How to tend crops?" Jack smiled, gesturing up and down at Ianto's suit. "The stuff in science fiction movies about locals being impressed with futuristic clothes is all crap, too. They'd think you look ridiculous. And if someone from, I don't know, 2090 showed up at the Hub one day, you'd think the same thing."

Ianto looked at Jack, considering. "What does that mean for a time traveler?"

Jack obviously approved of the question. He grinned. "The only way to survive as a time traveler is to recognize that, in the end, every single person is the same, no matter when or where they grew up. They're just people. They have a family and friends and interests and problems just like you do. The differences in background don't matter."

Ianto remembered, suddenly, the time in school when he had been caught shoplifting. He'd been given community service, made to pick up trash and help rebuild broken down neighborhoods. When he'd arrived to start working, he'd been terrified. The men he was to work with were Actual Criminals. Certainly, most of them had done the same thing he had, but they were adults and probably doing it out of necessity while he was doing it to impress his mates. They were the type of men his father avoided in the pub. He knew he was going to be destroyed.

But he wasn't. They liked him. He worked hard and didn't complain, and when they were given breaks the men would include him in their conversation. They had families and talked about them, told Ianto they wished he could trade places with their sons. They were just people. They were from poorer parts of town, but Ianto wasn't exactly living in the lap of luxury, and in the end it didn't mean anything, because here they all were together. On Ianto's last day, one of the men had pulled him aside and told him quietly not to get in trouble like this again, because he was smart and a good kid and he didn't need it. And Ianto hadn't.

Jack was watching him, and Ianto nodded. "All right," he said. "We're not primitive."

Jack stepped around the trolley and snaked his arms around Ianto's waist. "Not primitive," he said. "Fascinating." And Jack kissed him, in front of the soups and the artichoke hearts and passing shoppers of which Ianto was acutely aware. When Jack broke the kiss, he smiled and kept his arms where they were. "And anyway, I'm the one who's different, remember? I was born in the 51st century, but I dress like I just got out of the war. I've lived through all of the changes this world and they've all had their impact on me." He paused, smirking. "I grew up in a time when love and sex didn't have boundaries because of species or binary gender roles, and I live in a time where I can feel you get nervous when I kiss you in Tescos. But we're still the same."

"Are we?" Ianto asked, a bit breathless and utterly failing to hide it.

Jack shrugged. "As similar as two people can be, if one of them was born three thousand years after the other one. Which is surprisingly similar."

Ianto had never thought to calculate the years. With a shaky laugh he let his head fall onto Jack's shoulder. "My mother would be very disapproving of the age difference."

Jack laughed, and it shook both his chest and Ianto's. He slowly pulled away. "But do you get it?" he asked, holding Ianto's eyes. "I can't see you as primitive, because no one is primitive. I've seen man taming fire and building the Great Wall of China and going to the moon. And every single person I've ever met has had a name."

Ianto took a breath, but he did it through a small, real smile, which dulled away the meaning of his words. "One day you're going to tell me your real name. But that's another question, and it can wait."

Ianto turned and continued down the aisle, trusting Jack to follow him into the comparative simplicity of the produce section.


End file.
